We were a group of 5 including a kid 5 yrs old and decided to go for a road trip during the Diwali break. Manali was in my bucket list and thus decided to struck that out. Yeah! We started from Delhi at around 11.30 pm on a Friday night. Roads were still jam packed till murthal, guess there were many who were going outside Delhi to celebrate Diwali. We took a break at murthal as I am a big fan of "The chai" served at sukhdev da dhaba. From there we drove continuously till we crossed Chandigarh. A few km ahead of Chandigarh, we halt at a small dhaba for morning chai again. Then again geared up, we drove and soon realized the changes in the terrains. Again a break for breakfast and then drove till we reached our hotel (an oyo cottage). The journey was awesome with mountains on one side of the rode and a river flowing across the other side. It took us 14 hrs to drive from delhi with small breaks on our way.
Luckily the cottage we booked through oyo had a great view overall. View of snow cap mountains from the room. We reached hotel at 2 had lunch as we were dead hungry and took some rest . Later in the evening we walked across the woods and visited the Hadimba Temple, it was hardly 1 km from where we stayed, visited the local market (got some Yak cheese) and decided our visit to Rohtang Pass and Beas Kund.
Early next morning, we booked a cab which took us to Rohtang Pass, Beas Kund and on the way to rohtang pass we stopped to try Paragliding. And yes it was awesome!!!! It was chilling cold at rohtang pass, The breeze is soooo cold up there that you find it difficult to even breathe. We returned hotel at around 6pm after this day full of activities. The cottage owner organised a bonfire for all its guests and we had a great time there. It was our last night at Manali.
Next morning after breakfast we started for Kullu, Visited Manikaran, hot water spring (though we avoided bathing there), had lunch in the gurdwara, and then headed straight for delhi.
The otal cost of trip was 25k incluive of petrol, hotel, food, paragliding, cab from manali to rohtang.